Uma Ramakrishnan

Completed Applied Art (1973 – 1978)
from Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai,
Started painting in the year 1998

ABOUT UMA
– Written by Jaishree – 04/03/13

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
– Aristotle

Graphic artist and a sensitive painter, Uma studied Applied Art at Sophia College Polytechnic in Mumbai. Formal education only provides an understanding of medium and technique. The rest is left to the artist to explore and discover, which is just what Uma did. In 1998, she started painting seriously, slowly moving from being a Sunday painter to a more focused artist, inspired by everything around her even her dreams.

Uma started painting as a means of self-expression, making the transition overnight, from applied art to fine art. Painting slowly developed into a regular feature in her life and soon she was doing still life, investing in canvas and oil colors, blissfully happy, as canvasses started to pile up. They became answers to problems at work, life and on the personal front.
Uma’s doodles, sketches and paintings are about her experiences in life. Some of her subjects are elements of nature, the sea, relationships like parent and child, the human figure, self-portraits. She started as a realist, expressionist painter. Slowly, her style became more and more surreal, her subject became philosophical and spiritual. Paintings that followed showed war, the human soul; canvasses became larger.

As an experiment, she even got a couple of child dancers, perform classical dance on canvass with their feet soaked in paint. The figures that seemed to be dancing and disappearing looked liked illusions that were visible for a moment, disappearing in the next. Her paintings hold different interpretations for every viewer and many have identified themselves in her art. She awakens the subconscious of the viewer of her art. Though personal and deep, Uma’s paintings ‘speak’ to the viewer, thus crossing the line from personal to universal.

BIO Data

Date of Birth : Dec. 1955

Experience :

London – The Nehru Centre, High Commission of India – July 2nd – 6th, 2018
I was Invited to Exhibit here. Exhibition title – “Silence Speaks”.

Canada – Scarborough Arts, Cedar Ridge Gallery – December 2nd -18th 2017
Juried show titled “Something Different & the Big Art Book”.
An initiative of The City of Toronto. All three of my entries were selected.

Canada – Art Square / Art Hub Gallery – August 2nd – 14th, 2017
Participated in a Group Show in Toronto City where three of my paintings were displayed.

Washington DC – The Indian Embassy – May 5th, 2017
A 60 minute presentation/talk in English titled – “A Walk through the Artist’s Mind” followed by an exhibition of my paintings.

It was an immersive experience for the audience, inviting them to see the detail, understand the thought process behind the scenes of an ‘Art Work’ through the medium of Contemporary Indian Art. Embassy’s official page showcasing the talk is uploaded at the below mentioned link:https://youtu.be/1lmD4uwCAeY

March 2015 – Conducted a 3 hour art workshop for under privileged students enrolled into ACCESS – (US Embassy’s RELO English Micro Scholarship Program) at Anjuman-I-Islam Saif Tyabji High School-Mumbai, INDIA. My Concept – Help the girls and boys see differently and bring them around to understand Women’s Empowerment, through the medium of art.

November 2014 – Exhibited at India Art Festival at Nehru Centre in Mumbai in a group show of 3 artists.

When I studied Advertising, computers had not touched the art field. Everything was hand drawn. Sketching and life drawing formed an important part of our training. Fine Art is largely self-taught and now, so is working on computers.